Far Eastern Economic Review

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What to make of Singapore's first and former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who died Monday morning in the city-state? Under the banner of the People's Action Party, Lee held government power for three decades. After stepping away from the prime minister's office in 1990, he held positions of senior minister and later "minister mentor" until 2004, when his son, Lee Hsien Loong, became prime minister. Under their rule (and the interregnum of Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong--not a Lee family member, but hand-picked for the role, with the elder Lee looming over his shoulder for 14 years), Singapore emerged from Southeast Asia's post-Second World War tumult as its most successful economy, a combination of authoritarian government, democratic trappings, and free markets that some predict will be the next century's model for growth and stability. And Singapore's media policies are being replicated across much of Southeast Asia.

At Columbia University on Monday evening, CPJ board member Ahmed Rashid held forth to a full house
in a conversation with Steve Coll about U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan and
Pakistan. If you're reading this blog, there's most likely no need to explain
who Rashid is--or Coll, for that matter. The earliest reference
I could find on cpj.org to Rashid dated back to 2000, about events in 1999, when he
was the Islamabad bureau chief for the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review. His latest book, Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan,
is the most recent installment in a steady stream of trenchant, reliable,
reality-based analysis of geopolitical affairs in Central and South Asia. If
you need to be convinced, check out Foreign
Policy's list of Top 100 Global Thinkers.

A video of the event, which was co-sponsored by CPJ, is now available here.